North Korea - Society
In the relatively short span of 60 years, North Korea developed a unique society that is, in the opinion of many observers, the world’s most oppressive, heading the list of countries having atrocious human rights records. The society can best be described as a distinctively Korean version of socialism, mixing Marxist–Leninist ideas with the rigid hierarchical social structure and authoritarianism of Confucianism, enforced by an extreme totalitarian regime that rules with a mixture of terror and the world’s most intense personality cult. Despite mounting economic failures and horrific human rights abuses, the leadership has remained firmly in control of a compliant society in a well-armed but impoverished nation.
It is difficult to describe the mix of ideas and influences that came to bear on the creation of North Korea’s unique society. It is a rigid class society emphasizing Confucian hierarchal values, a fanatical cult society extolling Kim Il Sung as a demigod, an Orwellian thought-controlled society, a thoroughly militarized society, an impoverished socialist economy with a limited education system and woefully poor health-care system, no free religious institutions or spiritual teaching, and few, if any, basic human rights.
In North Korea, everyone over the age of six is a member of some sort of a unit outside the family. It can be the school one attends; the factory, collective farm, or government office where one works; or the military unit to which one is assigned. The unit provides housing, as well as food, clothing, and medical care. Normally, it is the father’s work unit that provides housing for his family. Thus, wives and children do not usually live with the people they work with or go to school with, although some students, mainly those in college or at Kim Il Sung University, live on campus. With the exception of domestic chores, women and children perform all their daily tasks with their work or school unit.
The basic social grouping is the work unit. Every North Korean belongs to one. A unit can be a school, factory, collective farm, government office, or military unit. It is the vehicle for political deveIOpment, observation, and social control. The unit provides housing as well as employment. It gives permission to marry and distributes rations of clothing and shoes. lt authorizes travel, out-of-town accommodations, and even a dinner at a public restaurant. It approves vacation time and arranges for a stay at a government rest home. A person must have the unit's permission to see a doctor, have an operation, or buy a watch or a bicycle. Finally, it is with members of the unit that North Koreans attend all party meetings, militia training, self-criticism sessions, morning and evening study sessions, and cultural or social events.
The new social system has created a tight, cohesive leadership, bound not only by an intense loyalty to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il but also by lifetime bonds to one another. In North Korea, one lives in housing provided by a father’s work unit, grows up with children of other fathers who work with one’s father, goes to school with those children, takes vacations with them, and eventually goes to work with them in the same career for the rest of one’s life.
Sociologists who contend that the complexity of an individual’s personality derives from the number of social groups to which an individual belongs could only conclude that the personality of most North Koreans is not that complex. They know fewer people in their lifetimes than the average person does in most other countries, and the people they know all share basically the same life experience in the same collective farm or factory or, in the case of the elite, in the same military ranks or foreign service or administrative work.
State-directed activities consume a major part of an individual's daily existence. Political study may take up as much as three hours a day during the six-day workweek. Add to this several hours of weekly self-criticism sessions and volunteer labor after work, on weekends, and during "free time" and some North Koreans will have spent the equivalent of 145 work days each year on these activities.
This leaves little time for recreation in any form. What evidence there is suggests that leisure time is concentrated on Sundays and limited vacation periods. It usually means going to a park, sporting event, or simply relaxing at home. The media — radio, television, and the press — offer only limited recreational opportunities. All printed material is designed to glorify the regime and stress its political message. The same is basically true for radio and television, although they carry some sporting events and local news.
The high moral standard the regime claims for its people stems in part from the fact that most people have little time or energy for getting into trouble. Reports of juvenile delinquency almost always involve the children of the elite or privileged.
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